Everyone at Project SNOWstorm is delighted that Dr. Rebecca McCabe has successfully defended her Ph.D. about snowy owl winter ecology. (©Becca McCabe)

It is with both pride and pleasure that everyone here at Project SNOWstorm sends our warmest congratulations to our newly minted doctoral colleague , Dr. Rebecca McCabe. Last Friday Becca successfully defended her McGill University (Montréal) Ph.D. dissertation, a wide-ranging examination of the winter ecology of snowy owls.

Becca’s work has already resulted in a number of published scientific papers based on her dissertation chapters, with more in the works. You can find those papers on our Publications page.

A native of Pennsylvania, Becca has been working with raptors for years. In 2014 she was a conservation science trainee at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania, and completed a master’s degree at East Stroudsburg University studying the nesting behavior of broad-winged hawks. Her doctoral research, under the supervision of SNOWstorm co-founder Jean-François Therrien at Hawk Mountain and Dr. Kyle Elliott at McGill, was underpinned to significant degree by Project SNOWstorm’s GPS movement data and our veterinary investigations into snowy owl health.

Last year she won the James A. Kushlan Award, given to support graduate studies at Hawk Mountain, and is currently doing post-doctoral studies there that will include a global population status assessment of snowy owls, partially underwritten by Project SNOWstorm.

Becca has been — and, we trust, will continue to be — a critical member of SNOWstorm’s core team. You’ve made us very proud, Dr. McCabe!